Arguably, the greatest Liberal power-grab in 20th century America was the passage of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution. Until its ratification in 1913, US Senators were elected by state electors, usually persons serving in that state’s legislature. The rationale for the elector system originated at the time the Constitution was created in the 1780s and was the same as for a College of Electors for President and Vice-president: to protect the smaller political entities (for President, the individual states, and for Senators, a state’s disparate counties) from being steam-rolled by one geographically small area with a large voter population. It is no coincidence that since 2000 many on the Left have muttered and fussed about abolishing the College of Electors and simply electing the President by popular vote. Most of the big cities – and their political machines, public and private labor unions, and legions of people perpetually on assistance – have been firmly in the control of the Left since their ruination by The Great Society begun in the 1960s. As one statistician wryly noted, in 2004 Chicago experienced an exuberant 104% voter turnout, with over 80% of that population voting for John Kerry. What politician would not want such a highly-motivated constituency?

On June 14, 2007, the Massachusetts Legislature defeated -- by five votes -- the attempt to put on the 2008 ballot a vote over whether the state could perform and recognize gay marriage. Massachusetts has been in the midst of a fight between those who insist it is their “right” and those who feel that they should have had a vote before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court – in an act so brazen that it would make Ruth Ginsberg blush – “discovered the right to gay marriage” in the Massachusetts Constitution. Regardless of the fact that no one in the state could find such a passage in this document, four of the court’s seven judges so ruled in 2003, with the chief justice openly advocating gay marriage as it went to trial. The current dust-up has been over whether such a vote could belatedly appear on the state ballot in 2008. This right to vote on a conservative issue has been defeated.

Massachusetts’ gays, lesbians, transsexuals, bisexuals, and other “people of gender” (what a marvelous piece of Leftist Newspeak!) had come out swinging with a well-funded marketing campaign blanketing the state. The ads featured state residents speaking glowingly of gay marriage and then the viewer is scolded that it is simply unacceptable to put a “civil right” to a vote, smartly making being anti-gay marriage a synonym for being a Nazi, belonging to the Ku Klux Klan, or being a serial child rapist (although the last is openly encouraged by such groups as http://www.nambla.org).

The idea that an invented “right” cannot be questioned by and voted upon by a state’s population stands in stark contrast to how the Left addresses real rights with which it disagrees. The first example that comes to mind is how the state’s liberals have punished, slandered, and tried to destroy anyone who believes they have the right to own a gun, per the Second Amendment to the US Constitution – a document they so assiduously support as long as they agree with any particular provision. Massachusetts lawful gun owners must register as criminals with the Criminal History Systems Board in Boston, just one of the provisions of Massachusetts’ Worst in the Nation gun laws (http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/seslaw98/sl980180.htm). No Massachusetts gun owner can move without first, via Registered Mail, notifying the chief of police in his old town, the chief of police in his new town, and the state Criminal History Systems Board (http://www.goal.org). Not even Level 1 convicted sex offenders must do this, but state liberals had no problem passing this provision to harass and punish the innocent law-abiding people. The punishment of the innocent in Chapter 180 goes on and on. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling.

These points need be considered against the fight over whether citizens have a right to vote on accepting or rejecting gay marriage in their state. For when boiled down, the Left’s argument is stark: “Whatever I want is my right, even if I have to invent it. You have only those privileges I give you, even if these are enumerated in the Constitution as natural rights.” That the Left can maintain such a mindset without their heads exploding is a sad commentary upon being educated far beyond one’s ability to understand, and of believing that they have an innate right to run the lives of the rest of us. This is the real battle for the United States and for the West.